COBRE-CCCR Resources
The Center for Colon Cancer Research (CCCR) at USC needed an application to help them keep track of their COBRE (Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence) resources. Managing their resources efficiently would help the CCCR by making both grant writing and research easier. Examples of the kind of resources they needed to keep track of are the names and locations of tissue samples and the contact information for the people who control them.
Working with ASG, it was decided that what CCCR needed was a sort of online card catalog: a fast, flexible web interface that allowed researchers to input and look up basic information about resources. The resulting web application was DynaForms. It works like a database-enabled spreadsheet, allowing users to organize information into categories and create data entry forms for each category. Unlike a regular spreadsheet, the information is searchable and accessible via a web browser.
The CCCR Resources site was deployed to the researchers' intranet within the university, and quickly obtained buy-in from most of the group. Users found it easy to upload existing spreadsheets and quickly enter additional data using DynaForms. Now, researchers no longer have to call person after person looking for a cell line or tissue sample: they can simply do a search on the CCCR Resources web site.
For more information about COBRE-CCCR Resources, contact ASG at info@asg.sc.edu.
